We play through the first 100 turns of Firaxis' next Civ game

We're still a couple months away from the retail release of Civilization: Beyond Earth (C:BE), but publisher 2K Games couldn't hold back the horde any longer. We've been eager to try it out because it's Civ, but also because it feels like a spiritual sequel to Alpha Centauri, which itself dealt with a nagging question from earlier entries in the series: What happens when you win the game by launching an interstellar ship into space? Where do those people go? At first glance, C:BE looks like a sci-fi Civilization V with an exotic color palette, but a number of new layers unfolded during our time with it.

You got your puzzles in my quantum mechanics

Writing a review of The Swapper by Facepalm Games—a studio surely named after the gesture you’ll perform when you finally solve the tougher challenges in this space-based puzzle scroller—is a bit like trying to talk about The Prestige to someone who’s never seen the film. If that’s you, it’s best you just go ahead and skip this review. Our guilt would be too great if we accidentally spoiled your cinematic enjoyment.

Note: This review was originally featured in the September 2013 issue of the magazine.

Former Maximum PC columnist turns Kickstarter campaigner.

There are several ways you might be familiar with David Gerrold. We've had the pleasure of working with him as a former columnist for Maximum PC magazine, in which he penned technology pieces under the "Future Tense" heading. He's also a screenwriter and novelist who wrote scripts for the original Star Trek episodes, and is the author of the Star Wolf series of books, which he's now trying to port over to television with the help of Kickstarter.

You kids and your fancy Internet can keep it and stick it where the sun doesn't shine. Or at least that's how Ray Bradbury, the 88-year-old sci-fi author who penned such classics as Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, and The Martian Chronicles, probably feels. Speaking to The New York Times, Bradbury had some interesting things to say about the cyber space.

"The Internet is a big distraction," Bradbury said as he was just warming up. "Yahoo called me eight weeks ago. They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You what I told them? 'To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.' It's distracting. It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere."

Yahoo had no comment on the issue, saying they weren't sure of Bradbury's account was accurate.

On a related note, online literature has become a hot topic as of late, particularly with the controversy surrounding Google's Book service. Google is trying to push through its Book Search initiative, which would give it exclusive access to digital editions of some out-of-print books, much to the chagrin of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and others who oppose the move.

Ace Ventura vividly described women as “a temple to house the miracle of procreation” in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, but scientists at a British University have ushered in an era in which robots will also be endowed with the divine gift of reproduction, or more precisely, replication. Researchers at the University of Bath have successfully developed RepRap, self-replicating machine that can copy itself ad infinitum.

Despite all the technological advancements you still have no choice but to click on the "Read More" link to know how the self-replicating robot might be a step closer to the ultimate sci-fi nightmare and how you can build one yourself.